The History Book Club discussion

Bentley, it’s apparent that America is on the move. It’s exciting!
Regards,
Andrea

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Oh my Goodness, Bentley and Douglass, What a feast!!! That you so much for assembling all this magnificent background material!!! I just checked the book out of the Houston Public Library and am pumped about reading it. There are so many great companion books out there like the Kendi book, the Coates book, the Stevenson book, plus Drew Hart’s seminal work!!! Thank you for working this up — it’s so timely.
Regards,
Andrea

by Ibram X. Kendi (no photo)
by Ta-Nehisi Coates (no photo)
by Bryan Stevenson
by Drew G.I. Hart (no photo)

Andrea wrote: " what a feast!!!! I just got the book out of the Houston Public Library and am pumped about reading it!!! Thank you for all this wealth of information!!! The Kendi book and the Coates book, and the..."

Yes, they are. What is taking me so long is that the book is like a text with questions etc. I am trying to give it the good old college try.

It really is Andrea and I wish I could do more.

Chapter 1 - more complete summary:

The author begins her book by stating that white people do not see themselves as defined by race, though we are. She writes that being defined by one's race is a common trigger of white fragility. She states that white people by definition have uninformed, ignorant opinions about racism unless they have devoted a great deal of study to the matter because nothing in the mainstream American culture gives us access to this type of training. Instead, people go through school and even hold leadership positions without any training about racism.

She examines what happens when we try to speak about racism. White fragility emerges, and social forces that keep the hierarchy of our society in place are too powerful to overcome. These forces include the ideas of meritocracy and individualism, as well as widespread segregation, and other forces. The process of understanding racism is a lifelong pursuit because the forces that create racism are so strong. However, we continue to protect ourselves by telling ourselves that racism consists only of "intentional acts of racial discrimination committed by immoral individuals" (9) prevents us from true learning.

White people, the author says, respond to the idea of racism with comments that seem, she says, culled from "a shared script" (9). She writes that this is predictable, as our shared script is the result of a shared culture. We don't objectively examine our Western cultural heritage--in particular, two ideas that hold us back form a thorough investigation of racism. These ideas are individualism, the idea that each person is unique, and objectivity, the idea that we can operate with biases. Individualism ignores the role of class, race, and gender and regards all people as equally able to achieve success. Though we believe groups don't matter, we know intrinsically that being a man is different than being a woman, that being rich is different than being poor, and that being able bodied is different than having a disability, and we know that being in one group is better than being in another. We are socialized into these understandings, and these judgements also reflect comparisons that one group membership is superior to another.

In addition, objectivity is the widespread idea that we are without biases. This idea protects us from the need to change. The title of her book alone challenges many white people because they believe she is generalizing and believe that they, by dint of their experience, are not subject to the forces of racism that affect the society. The author is comfortable making generalizations as a sociologist, and she asks readers to consider not only their individual experiences but also their group membership. She also asks readers to disregard the idea of racism as immoral actions and conscious dislike of people based on their race. She is not leveling this charge at readers. She instead asks us to lean into our discomfort and consider why looking at the forces of racism makes us so unsettled.

Source: Book Rags

More of a complete summary of Chapter Two where we still are in our discussion:

DiAngelo writes that we have been brought up to think of race as biological fact, while the truth is that there is no scientific truth to this idea. Instead, social and economic forces were behind the organization of society into different races. The U.S. was founded on the ideas of freedom, but it was also a place in which Indigenous people were killed in a genocide and African people were abducted from their homelands and enslaved. Jefferson himself sought to find a scientific basis for the differences among races, though in reality, there were social and economic motivations behind racism. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "But race is the child of racism, not the father" (10). In other words, racist ideas gave rise to the idea that there were different races. By believing that Black people are inferior, American society can justify its cruelty. By stating that the problem lies with Black people, American society does not see the problems with its racist institutions.

The author traces how the construct of race evolved over time. The term "white" was first mentioned in colonial laws in the late 17th century. After slavery was ended in 1865, it became important for different groups to achieve the designation of "white," and different groups petitioned the courts for this designation. Though the U.S. has been regarded as a "melting pot," the author writes that this metaphor only applies to Europeans. White ethnic groups such as the Irish, Polish, and Italians were originally thought of as separate but were eventually unified under the banner of being white. Though people with different ethnic heritages may have a different sense of identity, they are still included under the umbrella of being white. Poor whites were also brought under this umbrella so that they would feel less animosity towards those who were above them in the hierarchy.

DiAngelo differentiates racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Prejudice is judging someone based on one's social groups. Americans have been socialized to deny that they are prejudiced, which prevents them from truly examining the prejudices that everyone has. Discrimination is taking actions, such as exclusion, violence, or threats, based on prejudice. The author states that everyone has prejudice and discriminates. Racism is discrimination that has the support of institutions in society, including the legal system. Racism is a system that is outside the control of individuals. Racism begins with the ideologies that are inculcated into us from birth and that cause us to receive social penalties if we deny them. Ideologies in the U.S. reinforce the idea that our positions in society are the result of our own merit. While individual non-white people can exercise discrimination or prejudice, they can't exercise racism, as the institutions that hold power uphold the power of whites.

The author uses the metaphor of a birdcage to examine why whites don't always see how individuals are affected by racism. If one looks at a birdcage up close, one may not see the wires that entrap the bird. It is only by stepping back and seeing the interlocking wires that one can understand how completely racism entraps people. Whites enjoy freedom of the constraining forces of racism--a system of advantages called "white privilege"--though they don't always see the forces that affect people of color. In contrast, whiteness conveys privileges in legal, social, economic, and other spheres. Whites are considered the norm and people of color are considered deviations from the norm. Whiteness casts the experiences of Blacks like Jackie Robinson as exceptional and as exercises in meritocracy rather than as acknowledgments that whites kept all previous baseball players out of the professional leagues. Whites enjoy a clear structural advantage in society and operate within the power structure to decide the policies that govern the way everyone else must live.

The author uses the term "white supremacy" to refer not to violently racist individuals but to the system that identifies whites as culturally superior without examining its assumptions. The author believes the terms of white supremacy govern the tacit assumptions of societies around the world and that it is maintained because of its invisibility. Because it is not acknowledged, it is also not challenged. The author cites overwhelming statistics about the ways in which whites control most of the organizations in society that make laws or create media content. Republican politicians in particular have learned to use the so-called "Southern strategy" that promotes racist ideas without overtly referring to these ideas as white supremacist. By explicitly referring to the system as favoring white supremacy, we acknowledge the pervasiveness of racism and can start to change it. We also shift the responsibility for change back to whites. White people reinforce the message of racial supremacy though what sociologist Joe Feagin called the "white racial frame." This is the cultural framework that perpetuates negative ideas of blacks and positive ideas of whites. The author asks a series of questions that show the reader how deeply his or her world has been framed since childhood by racial assumptions, such as the way in which race is encoded in geography and the way in which white people are taught not to overtly mention race.

Source: Book Rags

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